perfidy

The hiatus will take a brief hiatus, before resuming its hiatusing. The wedding was cool. The burn was brief, lacking in sleep, and left me with a hangover. It got real hot. Then, today, I started work at my new yob, and they decided to throw me into the deep end of the pool. I can't speak for the rest of the Ministry, but look for semi-regular posting to resume tomorrow. Since linking him seems the only way to stop him from complaining even for a little bit, go read some of Murdoc's fine posts.

[wik] Actually, really read the first and last of those. The pics of the sunken Oriskany are a trip, and I approve of if not often emulate the practice of linking to brickmuppet's fine blog. Looks like Murdoc is trying to off-shore the battleship debate that has raged on his site for months.

I will shortly be making the grueling overland trek from our nation's capital to our first nation's capital, Philadelphia. One of my dearest and oldest friends (well, he's not any older than I am, but we've known each other for 33 of our 36 years) is finally getting married. So I'll be gone through Saturday for that, and then I'll be dropping in on the local mini-burning man for the last day of those festivities.

Everyone have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and stop and take a moment to remember why we have a Memorial Day weekend. I feel confident that many of our fine milbloggers will be offering up some reflections as the weekend progresses. So make the time if you can to check out Blackfive, Murdoc and all the rest.

Sometimes an album comes along that catches you totally by surprise. I mean, I'm ready for anything: Balinese gamelan music, recordings of shortwave static, German industrial music, Ace of Base, but I wasn't ready for Bobby Previte's Coalition of the Willing.

I don't know much about Bobby Previte. I know he's from Buffalo. I know he's a drummer and that he's big on the downtown Manhattan jazz scene. I know he's got a reputation for being a great player, a pioneering composer, and a freaky cat. He has interesting hair. But beyond that, the music of Bobby Previte is terra incognita to me.

I'm up for third stream, new wave, nu metal, Japanese dance, Greek art music, art house, acid house, acid jazz, jazz flute, Malinese song-flute, Hawaiian nose-flute, power pop, hard bop, Billy Joel and Iggy Pop, rockabilly, punkabilly, Carter Family, Manson Family, the Family Stone, the Stone Temple Pilots, Temple of the Dog, and antisocial synthesizer belches from two-person bands from northern Vermont.

But I never expected surf music.

Surf music! And psychedelic garage rock! And Miles Davis-style chugging electric glowering! And, and spy music! Like James Bond! And remember Lalo Schifrin, the guy who wrote the "Mission Impossible" theme, whose personal style mixed Continental snazzery with Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass and a dash of neatly tailored rock and roll? Him, too!

When Bobby Previte's new album crossed my decks, my first thought was, verbatim, "... The hell is this?"

Mainly, this was brought on by the cover art and album title. Previte's current band is called the Coalition of the Willing, which on its own is kind of funny, a gloss on a phrase that's been around since the 1980s, but which George W. Bush catapulted to fame (or infamy) when he applied it to the nations that backed the libervasion of Iraq in 2003. Fans of Robert Anton Wilson will remember the running joke toward the end of the Illuminatus! trilogy with all the bands named after real-world things, like "The American Medical Association." Other, less nerdy people might be familiar with Dave Barry's running joke that things like The Coalition of the Willing "would make a great band name." Either way, "Coalition of the Willing" is a great name for a band.

However.

Over the last five years or so my patience for all things Orwellian has run thin. This goes both for actual pieces of Orwelliana like the fatuously named "Department of Homeland Security" as well as pretend pieces of Orwelliana, like albums that take half their song titles from the pages of 1984. Indeed, The Coalition of the Willing features the titles, "The Ministry of Truth," "The Ministry of Love," "Memory Hole," and "Oceania," as well as an album cover in the classic Che/Castro/Anarchist hues of red, white and black and festooned with raised fists. Ugh. Whatever they were going for with the cover art, what they came up with makes my eyes roll, my gorge rise, and awakens an urge in my heart to grab a truncheon and stand guard on the nearest barricade on behalf of The Man, The System, and capitalist pigs anywhere. Filthy lucre forever!!

Oh, right. The music. What's the music like?

It turns out that The Coalition of the Willing features one of the largest differentials between cover art quality and the quality of the music inside since Guns & Roses scrapped the original "robot rape" cover to Appetite For Destruction for the less awful version we all know and love.

That is to say, The Coalition Of The Willing is a damn good record, eight long instrumental slices of jazz-inflected rock spiked with liberal dashes of surf and spy music, fusion a la electric Miles Davis, and even house and reggae. There's not a slack bit, there are no twiddly precious solos, and all the genre-hopping manages to add spice, rather than just confuse matters.

Previte is a sensitive drummer with a great sense of groove, and the players he assembled for this project are uniformly top-notch. Notably, guitar wizard Charlie Hunter plays on every track, even choosing to lay aside his trademark eight-string guitar for a standard six-string model. And although he is by far the best-known musician to grace these tracks, he doesn't overshadow the other contributors, who include Steve Bernstein (of the unfortunately-named New York group Sex Mob) on trumpet, Jamie Saft on the Hammond organ, Stew Cutler on occasional harmonica, the one-named Skerik, a tenor saxophonist who plays with Les Claypool of Primus, and Stanton Moore, drummer for the jammy New Orleans funk outfit Galactic.

Anyway, about the music. Given that Bobby Previte and Charlie Hunter are pretty well known for playing hip, cerebral and challenging New York jazz, the last thing I expected when I popped this album in the player was to be met at the door by a groove that is about 50% "Incense and Peppermints" and 50% theme music to some lurid imaginary Roger Corman film with a title like "Surf Nazis Run Wild!!!" or "Bikini Girl Go-Go Shootout!!!"

And yet, the very first track overcomes its Orwellian title ("The Ministry of Truth") with just such a sound, a snazzy, tacky vibe driven by the jet-setting Hammond organ of Jamie Saft and a foursquare beat from Previte that would be equally at home on a Lalo Shifrin album or some lost track from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. Over this, Charlie Hunter spits edgy chromatic James Bond-theme-style melodic fragments until he is mugged by a scratchy harmonica solo from Stew Cutler. The whole thing brings to mind a dizzying array of great pop culture moments, from the original Batman TV series to Ren & Stimpy, and that's just in the first five minutes of the record.

Throughout, Previte and his band switch gears without even trying. "Oceania" jams a 12-string guitar riff that sounds like a broken-down Midnight Oil song right next to more spy music right next to reggae without even blinking. Impressively, this all sounds perfectly natural. None of the transitions anywhere on the record sound forced or awkward, no matter how unrelated the two sections might be. Whether it is Hunter's metal riffage on "The Ministry of Love," the atmospheric house-inflected groove of "Anthem for Andrea" or Skerik's ruminatory make-out sax on "Memory Hole," there's not a moment where the album sounds flat or self-indulgent. For an instrumental album made by a bunch of serious jazzheads, that's flat out impressive.

The final test, of course, is to try this album out on someone unsuspecting. Someone whose relationship to music is less fanatic than mine. Someone who doesn't dig on modern art-music that sounds like you've stuck your head in an air duct. Someone who doesn't get the melody lines from archival Frank Zappa live performances stuck in their head for days on end.

What I'm trying to say is, my wife dug this album too.

The Coalition Of The Willing features players of fearsome talent playing stylish, sinister, beautiful, fractured, epic music with a sense of fun that dumps any consternation caused by the strange song-title and cover art choices right down the memory hole.

This post also appears at blogcritics.org.

The original polka dot has been carefully preserved in a textile museum near Brussels.

Today is my last day of work. Until next Tuesday, anyway. What with wrapping up projects at my soon to be ex-place of employment, I am rather busy. But here are a few spacely tidbits to occupy your mind:

• Zoe Brain has an in-depth and critical look at NASA's Apollo retread, I mean CEV program. I would offer detailed comments, but that would be gilding the lilly, as I agree with everything she says.
• Alan Stern, the big brain responsible for the New Horizons Pluto Mission, has an exceedingly clever idea for supplying our future moon colonists with water. To save money, effort and time, he insists, we need not bother with cumbersome and outmoded concepts like actually decelerating our water when it reaches the moon. Water ice can simply be crashed into the moon like a comet, where it will accomodatingly enough bury itself a few feet under the Lunar regolith, there safe from evaporation but still easy to get to. Apparently, only about 15% of the water will be lost on impact, and as an added bonus, we get to do comet research by studying the impact craters.
• Also from space.com, the Voyager 2 spacecraft is expected to cross the outermost limits of the solar system, the termination shock. Which sounds suspiciously like what happened to me one Friday about two years ago this week. In this case, however, Voyager will hopefully provide some info on why the heliosphere is all funny shaped.
• Rand Simberg on SDLVness, EELVness, and other expensive and ill-thought NASA acronyms.

Murdoc, whose omnipresence and coverage of matters martial forces my corporeal energies to choose between crying with joy or popping a boner, brings this story on a protest at a recruiting office. As Murdoc points out, the argument seems to go: protest-->no recruits-->no recruiters-->no soldiers-->no one to fight war-->end of war-->world peace. Which might be nice, if so many people weren't trying so desperately to kill us. Except that they ARE trying desperately to kill us, so this sort of activity is basically stupid.

This line of his though made me snort: with no soldiers, "just think of all the extra people available to grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves".

You know, in the wake of 9-11, I thought, if nothing else, the America-hating hippie military-bashing filth would finally have to face that there are people on this Earth who want to kill us all- Christian, Jew, hippie, stud, etc- ALL of us, and that we can at least work together from that starting point. Whatever our fundamental differences politically and culturally, right, left, up, down, Federalist and Communist can move forward providing for the common defense. Within about a week I was disgusted by my own naivete.

Well, what military-haters don't comprehend is that recruiters are professionals. Anything that grabastic, screechy children do, say, or attempt matters pretty close to zero on their Important Shit-o-Meter. You don't matter to them in any meaningful way. I like that.

Nevertheless, I have felt that some gesture ought to be made to counter the drum-circle set. No, professionals don't need such gestures, but I do. One thing I've done is to buy lunch for the local recruiters. It's a little thing, I know, but it's just some way to show that not everyone in the community is against them. Nothing fancy; send over some good takeout or something.

Try it.

We can all see that there is a need, or at least an available niche, for those wishing to provide ideologically filtered news. In a broad sense, both CNN and Fox do exactly that. On the interweb, home of a billion schismatic communities, one would expect to find a website tailored to the mind of the conservative. So, of course, someone stepped up to the plate.

But did it have to be so... gauche?

Stolen from Whatever, a magical webthingy for making your very own, personal De-Motivators.

Here, I victimize my pets:

[wik] The Ministry of Future Perfidy in the far, far, unimaginable year of 2025 is shocked, shocked, to find that the link for the meme generator still works. Was meme even a word in the before-times of 2006?

From NDR at The Rhine River I discover that someone has gone to all the trouble of assembling a list of the twenty five best American novels of the last quarter century. Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the Times Review of Books, sent out a letter to writers, critics, and other literary muckety-mucks and asked them to name the best American Novel. The results are striking. First, I've read three of them, including number one. Second, I've read three times more of these novels than NDR. And third, to paraphrase JBS Haldane, "I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of Phillip Roth."

A California-compliant civilian model of the M1 Abrams Tank is scheduled for regular production by 2008.

Well, maybe not to that deluxe apartment in the sky. But the Buckethead has secured new and more remunerative employment, and will be leaving the comfortable if unchallenging realm of the government contractor for the fast paced results-oriented world of the commercial sector. I will leave the humid and dank lowlands of the Justice department for the sunny uplands of a small consulting group. My early experience in a small start up several years ago was without question one of the most rewarding and fun times I've ever had at work, and I hope that this job will prove to be the same. And thanks to the extra money, my son won't have to get a summer job. Good for him, because the only jobs available for three year olds are either degrading or not well paid.

One key benefit for me in this new gig is that I will be able to work at home for a good portion of the working week. The reason this is key is that it will allow me to reasonably take on short term and part time gigs that were just not feasible when I had to be at the job site every day during business hours. You can't easily or indeed legally take a conference call for another gig when you're sitting in a government office cubical, and taking off time a couple times a week to tend to your side gigs quickly becomes suspicious. Now though, I can do that sort of thing without interfering with the main job.

While I have some feelers out for those part time and short term writing jobs, I would certainly appreciate any leads that you, my loyal readers, can give me. So you know, I have nearly a decade of experience as a technical writer in the software field, writing manuals, supporting documentation, help systems and web copy. Of course, I also have three years experience as a world class blogger. What I'm looking for is technical writing gigs, and journalism-type gigs in the software industry press. Any help will of course be greatly appreciated, and will certainly merit prominent mention in these pages.

[wik] Thanks to Nicholas for pointing out some word use issues. While you're thanking him for the quality of this post, go encourage him to post more than once a month, on average.

Tigerhawk links to a Forbes article that reveals that, once controlled for hours worked, tenure and other factors, women make 17% more then men. It turns out that there are twenty-five factors that lead to women earning less overall. Men make decisions that result in their making more money. On the other hand, women make decisions that earn them better lives (e.g., more family and friend time). However, when men don't have families - they often make similar choices that make them less money. Interesting stuff, though I sometimes wish my wife made 117% of what I made, so I could stay home and, I don't know, blog or something.

[wik] Tigerhawk also talks about Harvey Mansfield and the firing of Harvard President Larry Summers. More interesting stuff.

Big Daddy 2x4, another milblog alumni, links to something that will, I'm sure, suck hours of my increasingly high billrate time. If I blow an afternoon looking at this, somebody owes me money. A lot of money. But if you work at McDonald's, your opportunity cost will be much lower. So go check out Make Magazine, and learn how to make shit.

Forgot to mention, ArmyWife also has a cool link to Plan 59, the museum (and gift shop) of mid-century illustration.

And to steal Cat's joke, its always a pleasure looking at ArmyWife's can.

Banishing the overwhelming pink to the outer darkness can only be a good thing.

At the Milblog conference a little while back, I met Deborah and Mike from the War Tapes. Deborah had the idea of giving cameras to soldiers, and Mike was one of the soldiers of the New Hampshire Guard who took one to Iraq. I had a great time sitting with Mike at Finn's waiting on his food (for over an hour) and talking old cars and motorcycles. I've watched some of the clips they've released as teasers, and it looks like its going to be a remarkable film. Their movie premiered at the Tibeca film festival to acclaim, and now it will be opening around the country. New York will get it on the 2nd of June, and Washington, Boston and SF on the 30th. You can believe that I will be at the opening here in DC. (Johno, I recommend you see it as well up there in beantown.)

But apparently some people don't get it. Andi of Andi's world reports that some in the mainstream media are less than enthusiastic where the film grates up against their ideological filters.

[wik] On a completely other and rather inconsequential note, I am pleased to finally have a reason to use the "War" and "Entertainment" categories at the same time.

Over at Zoe Brain, I find a country quiz. A surprisingly accurate one, as it turns out:

You're the United States of America!

You were probably a big bully in school, and odds are that you're still a big bully. You make promises that you break, you manipulate everyone around you, and you're awfully materialistic. On the other hand, you're pretty inventive and have a really good sense of justice. You just never get around to applying the idea of justice to yourself. Incredible potential remains yours to take advantage of.

Seeing how good that one was, I just had to see if the state quiz was up to snuff. And, to my undying amazement, it got that right, too:

You're Ohio!

Why-o, why-o, why-o are you so bland? Despite being in a fairly interesting location with a fair amount of potential, most people are struck by how little about you is noteworthy. Of course you know there's nothing wrong with being average, and that's where most folks are anyway! You do have a flair for rock-n-roll, though you mostly prefer the old stuff. You have the unique trait of, at times, experiencing air as a brown solid. One of your names undoubtedly starts with the letter C.

Despite the accuracy of the quiz result, I am less than pleased with the state description offered here.

Taking the other quizzes, the University quiz resulted in a college I was planning to attend before I became drunk for five years; the animal quiz pegged me as human; and if I were a book, apparently I would be 1984. Not bad for a few random interweb quizzes.

[wik] The authors of the state quiz should be aware, however, that the Quaker Oats company was founded in Ohio, and has little to do with Pennsylvania.

Ever get the tight feeling in your chest when you see a woman? A little twist of fear, even though you are a decent husband with no mistresses, drug habits or intent to rape anyone? Well, this is the reason.

Ever get the tight feeling in your chest when you see a police officer? A little twist of fear, even though you are a law-abiding citizen with no drugs, unregistered weapons or ill intent? Well, this is the reason.

Pat Robertson, gadfly and messiah-in-waiting, has announced to the world that God told him that storms and possibly, a tsunami will strike the United States in the coming year. During a prayer retreat this past January, it seems that the almighty interrupted Pat's prayers to deliver this surprisingly vague warning. Maybe the Lord God was mumbling, for as Robertson relates, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms, [and] There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest." I know from personal experience that I, at least, make an effort to pay attention and listen attentively when my Savior gives me hot stock tips or warnings of natural disasters. I am surprised that someone as publicly religious as Mr. Robertson was nodding off while the Lord of Hosts gave him knowledge that is of life and death importance to his fellow countrymen.

But then, he has a history of not paying attention. For instance, in his twisty little mind, he managed to translate "Thou shalt not kill" into "Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves shalt be assassinated by agents of the US government."

As it happens, Robertson is wrong on the particulars of his revelation. The Holy Ghost stopped in for a beer the other night, and told me that the Tsunami will hit the east coast as a result of the collapse of the west face of a volcano in the Canary Islands, and it will be in 2008, the day before the election in November. And of course, storms hit the coasts of the United States every year, and 2006 will be no different.

Myself, I have been waiting for God to demand that Robertson be given a 100 million dollars lest he gathered into heaven. That will be must see tv.

In order to cut court costs, Queen Elizabeth I reluctantly expunged four letters from the English alphabet.

Apropos of nothing in particular, I thought I'd let everyone know that there is a turkey hen (or whatever lady turkeys are called) living in my area. She used to have some gal-pals; lately I've only seen a single one. Like yesterday, when she was slowly walking past my truck in the cold morning drizzle, slurping up worms or ticks or CHUDS or whateverfuck bubbles to the surface in heavy rain.

Didn't pay me any mind, which was good, because the only weapon close at hand to defend against a turkoconic onslaught was my bright yellow metal thermos and the hot Earl Grey therein.

Last evening I was inside but saw motion off the back deck, out of the corner of my eye. It was the weird light of slacking rain and dusk; for a second I thought it was the turkey. But nope-it was venison steaks and a buckskin jacket waiting to happen; a young buck in the yard. I had heard from a neighbor that we get them fairly regularly, but I hadn't seen any myself til last night.

Well, in my backyard anyway. I see alot of deer in my travels, and enough turkeys where I'm not surprised if I spy any in the woodline. And of course all the basic town varmints: possums, raccoons. Bats. Which freak out the wife, and my calling them "just flying mice" doesn't help. I hear an owl every so often. Billions and billions of geese.

Oh, and perhaps a chupacabra. Something got into my trash the other night. The can was full, mebbe 50 lbs, and the heavy bag was on the very bottom. Well, something was strong enough, clever enough, or lucky enough to have pulled the can over, popped the locking lid, and had a buffet with a bunch of gross shit I was trying to throw away. And the something had pointy teefers, judging by the torn bags.

My first thought was racoon, but that was a pretty heavy can. Prolly could've gotten the lid off, but pulled it over...? I kinda doubt it; ditto an ambitious stray cat. Then I thought big dog, but we don't have any strays in the area and I was confident the locking lid technology would thwart the cleverest canine (not particularly challenging I know, just saying). Black bear is not entirely implausible, but would be an extreme stretch.

Which pretty much leaves me with chupacabra.

Come to find out that the guy who made this:

Absolutely did not knowingly lend his name to this:

Different cat entirely.

Ministry Crony Rocket Jones, also known as Ted, has a new banner. I dig it. I mean, who doesn't love a Soylent Green reference? And applying it as he has, well, that's just delicious:

However, I must take issue with the other side of this otherwise excellent banner:

Ted says he's thinking outside the box. But that tagline is in the box! How am I to resolve this paradox? Is it sarcasm, ironic distance, or mere inattention?

I find that I am actually upset that I missed a professional basketball game. This is completely unprecedented in my experience, seeing as I am much more inclined to baseball, college football and obscure sports. I have always viewed pro basketball as a beauty show for thugs and retards. Amazingly, I still think that, but...

I watched the Cleveland Cavaliers, team of my hometown, defeat the Washington Wizards, team of my current home. It was fun, because I could go into work and ridicule my colleagues, remind them of the tactically foolish move of trading Hughes to the team that would knock them out of the playoffs. And seeing that Cavs win was just nice. Cleveland teams so rarely do.

But that playoff win threw them up against the juggernaut of the Detroit Pistons. It's hard for me to write a sentence that includes both "Juggernaut" and "Detroit" because (given my prediliction for baseball and football, and the current state of the city) Detroit is a byword for failure, incompetence and pathos. Nevertheless, it seems that Pistons have won every championship since Michael Jordan was abducted by aliens and replaced with a less than perfect clone. And the received wisdom was that the Cavs would be ground to itty-bitty pieces of red gristle.

And, in the first two games that is more or less what happened. So, I wrote off the Cavs and read Vernor Vinge's new book Rainbows End. (Very, very good, btw.)

Now I discover, to my horror, that the Cavs pulled unforseen victory out of their collective asses. They have won the last two games, even without one of their best players - Hughes, whose brother recently passed away. The series now stands at 2-2. And I missed the exciting comeback. I realize that this is mere prelude for eventual disappointment and heartbreak, but I will certainly be watching the rest of the playoffs.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes.

My dear 'ol mum, not a noted French-hater, sent me an electronic mail over the weekend just chock-full of derisive remarks on the military valor of the French. I have no option but to share:

• "The last time the French asked for 'more proof ' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." --David Letterman
• "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." --General George S. Patton
• "War without France would be like ... World War II." --Unknown
• "What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against DisneyWorld and Big Macs than the Nazis?" --Dennis Miller
• "It is important to remember that the French have always been there when they needed us." --Alan Kent
• "Do you know it only took Germany three days to conquer France in WWII? And that's because it was raining." --John Xereas, Manager, DC Improv
• "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --Norman Schwartzkopf
• "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." --Marge Simpson
• "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." --Jacques Chirac, President of France
• "As far as France is concerned, you're right." --Rush Limbaugh
• "The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee." --Regis Philbin
• "The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky I don't know." --P.J. O'Rourke (1989)
• "You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it." --John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
• "You know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because he hates America, he loves mistresses and wears a beret. He is French, people." --Conan O'Brien
• "I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get Hitler out of France either." --Jay Leno
• "Only thing worse than a Frenchman is a Frenchman who lives in Canada." --Ted Nugent
• "The favorite bumper sticker in Washington D.C. right now is one that says 'First Iraq, then France.'" --Tom Brokaw
• "They've taken their own precautions against al-Qa'ida. To prepare for an attack, each Frenchman is urged to keep duct tape, a white flag, and a three-day supply of mistresses in the house." --Argus Hamilton
• "Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day -- the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once.'" --Rep. Roy Blunt, MO
• "The French will only agree to go to war when we've proven we've found truffles in Iraq." --Dennis Miller
• "Raise your right hand if you like the French, ... raise both hands if you are French." --Unknown
• Q. What did the mayor of Paris say to the German Army as they entered the city in WWII?
  A. Table for 100,000 m'sieur?
• "Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known, it's never been tried." --Rep. R. Blount, MO
• The AP and UPI reported that the French Government announced after the London bombings that it has raised its terror alert level from Run to Hide. The only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate. The rise in the alert level was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively disabling their military.
• French Ban Fireworks at Euro Disney
  (AP), Paris, March 5, 2003
  The French Government announced today that it is imposing a ban on the use of fireworks at Euro Disney. The decision comes the day after a nightly fireworks display at the park, located just 30 miles outside of Paris, caused the soldiers at a nearby French Army garrison to surrender to a group of Czech tourists

For Perfidy readers in Florida, the Ministry recommends retasking your Ministry-approved Zombie Survival Kits (ZSKs) to defense against Alligators. By our calculations, the death rate from alligator attacks has seen an approximately 700 fold jump over the past weekend. A conservative linear extrapolation of this trend would have us losing the the entire population of Florida by sometime next Tuesday. We always thought it would be zombies, or space lizards, or giant fighting robots. But the exact face of our doom is immaterial. What matters is that we go down fighting, with a shotgun in one hand and the bible in the other. Well, maybe a revolver and the Torah. Or a baseball bat and the Bhagavad-Gita. Or a flouncy small sword and a readers digest condensed Shakespeare. Or a metalstorm pistol and a leather bound edition of Dune.

Anyway, armed, and gripping firmly some physical artifact of our our long, glorious and ultimately doomed civilization. Death to the Alligators!

Characteristic of national media (and "local" outlets of national media- Boston Globe, z.b), recent coverage of inclement weather ignores the balance of Massachusetts that lies beyond the Boston suburbs. The AP may be interested to know that in addition to the Hub, it's raining in the 130-odd miles between there and New York state too. Since last Tuesday.

We're ok though- thanks for checking.

[wik]Lest anyone doubt how Beacon Hill views the plebes, proles, and peons who populate the state west of say, Cambridge, consider the recent episode where Ted Kennedy's jet was struck by lightning. He spoke in North Adams, was flying to Cape Cod to spend the night, only to come back out to Springfield to speak the next day. The guy can't even bear to spend a night among his non-monied constituents.

Malthus was terribly, terribly wrong. It seems that while people are screwing around as much as ever, they are not making babies. And as we all know, not making babies leads to a dearth of adults somewhere down the line. While I have been doing my part, having spawned two offspring and planning for another, there is only so much that I can do to make up for the shortcomings of a global population of billions. At a stretch, maybe I can cover Johno's depressingly liberal childlessness, but the rest of you are on your own.

And it turns out that the problems of depopulation may in fact be worse than the problems of overpopulation that gloomy and pessimistic Malthusians have been trumpeting lo these many centuries. If you stumble, you can sometimes run faster to save yourself from a spill. And that is not a bad analogy for the overpopulation and technology. But with depopulation, we may find ourselves with our legs cut out from under us.

Also, there will be a lot more Baptists.

It really is.

Via a afterthought at Dean's World, the theory of Advancement, or why Val Kilmer and Lou Reed are the world's greatest artists, and Neil Young isn't.

"Males are little flying sperm missiles."

While some may argue the general applicability of this statement, it in fact comes from an article about the pervasiveness and sheer bulk of the world's ant population.

Ministry Crony Mapgirl is a useful little blogger. She shovels out the personal finance info with both hands, and is undoubtedly helping thousands to conquer the soul draining terror of indebtedness and lack of sound financial planning. Yet, I find that I miss the gossip and angst of the old mapgirl blog.

For instance, this useful post on a marvelous concept called "EBoC." The Emergency Basket o' Cash. Being who I am, I would change that to Bucket o' Cash, but your mileage may vary. The old Mapgirl would have layered this post with obscure references to people I might have heard of, and hinted at how someone, at some point, someone I may or may not have met and is only identified by initials or codename, once may have had need for an EBoC and a fast car.

Still and all, its good advice. Having a bucket o' cash can come in awful handy. Having it directly to hand, as in physically in a bucket in your home, is even more handy. For example, if the zombies come. Now, in all likelihood, the zombies will start out small. In the interim between the first casualties, ignored by the media and also by all right thinking people - but before the inexorable exponential curve of zombie population growth leads to the total collapse of civilization - having a bucket o' cash will be a very useful thing indeed. With a cold, hard, cash, you can buy essential items for your zombie survival kit that you had up to that point neglected. Items that the foolhardy will not yet realize are essential, and will for the sake of greed part with.

For example, Minister Johno is sadly negligent in acquiring sufficient firepower to deal with the looming zombie threat. However, should he have access to a ZSK EBoC, he could (once alerted to the arrival of the zombies) run down to the local gun nut lair and purchase a weapon and ammunition. Money will be useful almost right up to the total collapse of civilization, simply because most people will refuse to believe that civilization is in fact collapsing. Use that delusion for your own benefit. Besides, you wouldn't want some sap who'd rather have a thousand bucks in crisp twenties than a finely machined shotgun and a bag full of ammo at your back anyway.

So, even though Mapgirl was unwilling for the sake of appearances to discuss this crucial aspect; follow her advice, or have your brain eaten.

[wik] I wonder if we could get Tyler Cowen to discuss the inflationary aspects of the money economy intermediate phase of the zombie takeover.

The U.S. Patent Office refused to patent the common BB because they require two views.

As if tailor-made for our ongoing non-discussion of the sloppiness and inadequacies of human-based journalism, Reuters has a story about the need for the Big Apple to prepare to bite the Big Weenie: a huge hurricane.

Yeah ok fine- slow news day I guess, so Reuters goes with a news story about something that hasn't happened to fill space. I get that. But at least they could've made some effort to work in other stuff for New Yawkahs to prepare for and be afraid of, stuff that might be at least as plausible as a tremendous hurricane.

Better prepare for Bird Flu; SARS; SARS Flu; Bird-Fu; atmospheric nuclear detonations and EMPs; comets; asteroids; reinforced tungsten rods; black triangles; black helicopters; black shadow people; anything that comes through a stargate; possessive demons (never to be confused with progressive demons, who just want you to sign petitions and buy their crappy band's demo); sunspots; invaders from outer space, the hollow Earth, or extradimensional universes; hums, vibrations, harmonics and other resonances of a non-corporeal nature; the Second Coming (unless you're Jewish); the First Coming (if you are); terrorists; zombies; skeletons; ninjas; bikers; tsunamis; earthquakes; dust storms; sand storms; gravel storms; Grape Nuts storms; hail (of all hyphenated-ball sized) storms; the BBC/BBW nexus; any and all federal agencies, task forces, or commissions; the Bilderburgers, Brandenburgs, Habsburgs, hamburger, and the Hamburglar; all appliances, equipment, or accessories that glow in the dark; Ethan Frome; LCDs; LEDs; IEDs; LSDs; LSTs; DVDs and IUDs; and everyone on the subway, or pretty much everyone, period.

So make sure you store potable water and stuff and you’ll be fine.

Two-Cycle Cream Ale

4 lbs dry malt extract, light
1 lb rice extract solids
4 oz Crystal malt, 10L
4 oz Crystal malt, 20L
1 oz Perle hops, 7.8% AA (bittering)
1.5 oz Liberty hops, 3.8% AA (aroma)
1 packet SA-56 American ale yeast (dry)

Since summer is coming, I decided to make a decidedly light and dry-finishing beer with moderate bitterness and a light hop nose. Lawnmower beer! I used a pound of rice extract in place of some of the barley malt extract to both lighten the body and dry out the finish, and added a good amount of Liberty hops to provide the floral, crisp nose I'm after. Basically, I'm after a homemade version of Ballantine's or Genesee Cream Ale but with, you know, flavor.

Procedure:
Brought 2.5 liters (10 cups) water to 160 degrees, added the Crystal malts in a muslin bag, and held at temperature for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, began to heat 3.5 gallons water in brew kettle. Swished grain bag around in brew kettle to get all the sugars out of the malt, and discarded. Added crystal malt tea to brew kettle and brought to boil. Turned off heat, added dry malt extracts and Perle hops, and set the boil clock for 60 minutes. Added Liberty hops for the last 5 minutes..

Removed kettle to bathtub with water and 35 pounds of commercial ice. I had the temperature in the kettle down to 79 degrees in about 40 minutes.

Added one gallon of chilled spring water to fermenter bucket. Added wort, and topped up to 5.25 gallons (approx) with some more spring water. (I like to add a little extra water to my recipes to make up for what I'll lose to the yeastcake and general inefficiency in the racking and bottling process. It makes very little difference to the final flavor, in any case no difference that I'd ever notice.) Poured back and forth between kettle and bucket to aerate wort, and pitched yeast at 69 degrees.

Here's the description of the yeast I'm using: "Produces well balanced beers with low diacetyl and a very clean, crisp end palate. It accentuates the hop flavors and is extremely versatile. Sedimentation is low to medium, and final gravity is medium."

I don't think I'll put this one in secondary fermentation. Although it would probably benefit from a couple extra weeks conditioning time off the yeastcake, I don't want to risk oxygen-damage or contamination upon transfer to the secondary vessel. In a beer this light, any off-flavors have nowhere to hide. Also, I'm running low on beer in the cellar, and it'd be really nice to be able to enjoy this batch a month from Friday.

This recipe is very similar to the Cream Ale kit recipe that my beer supply store sells. The only difference with theirs is they use even lighter Crystal malt (3 degrees Lovibond, the very lightest) than I do, plus some Carapils malt. Also called Dextrin malt, Carapils doesn't contribute sweetness as much as it contributes unfermentable starches that give a beer some body. In a cream ale, that would be very welcome: as long as this recipe works well, next time I'll use his grainbill and some spicy German Tettnanger hops for the nose.

[wik] On bottling, the beer is very good - light malt sweetness upfront with nice soft spicy complexity from the hops, and crisp and dry on the finish with more hop notes. Pretty much exactly what I was going for. It might be a shade too bitter - not a dealbreaker, especially since Perle are a fairly polite bittering hop, but we'll have to see how things develop in the bottle.

Primed with 4 oz corn sugar at bottling.

[alsø wik] The final estimation was "ok, not great." I would have done better to use a cleaner ale yeast, like a Kolsch or Chico strain, and some more flavor/aroma hops.

Every Friday, weather permitting, I walk with the Li'lest Lethal. Lady Lethal takes him every day, pretty much, but Fridays I have him to myself. We have a pretty good time, I like to think, and getting out of the house a little is good for both of us.

Oftentimes we go one town over, which is alot nicer than the town we actually live in. Not that we live particularly shabbily, but THAT town has longer and nicer sidewalks, many of which wrap around its stately olde towne common. The historic homes overlooking the olde towne common advertise their historicity with placards declaring how old the place is and who built it: Elihu Jehosephatt, 1713. Fitzhugh Broadwinnings, 1805. Jeremiah Broadwinnings, 1842. They're interesting in their details and pleasing to the eye. But in the back of my mind I think what a drag it is to own such a house, needing the local historical committee's permission to drive a friggin nail.

The war memorial sits in the center of the common, an arc of dry-stacked stone and aging words facing a single simple flagpole. The memorial includes the names of the town's men who fell in battle as far back as pre-Revolution campaigns against the native tribes. Some of the names on the cold, weathered bronze tablets are the same as on the houses we just walked past.

The only business near the common is the cosmetic surgeon and day spa, but even they are set up in small, restrained structures that fit the neighborhood. It's almost as if they were always there, where George Washington got his DaVinci veneers, and Paul Revere had a little nip and tuck after one too many Boston winters.

It's a nice place to walk, overall, on a cool spring day.

'Cept for the gay-bashers.

Last Friday a friend from my part time job, whose name is Storm (really), came over before work to hang out. Instead of lunch we got some beverages and walked on the common. We were just gabbing about this and that, work, that sort of thing. Storm was digging all the eye-candy in the area at that time of day, between a local college, random passers-by, and a heavy MILF concentration. At one point I said something along the lines of, "You know Storm, we probably look like a coupla homos with our adopted baby, between the big baby stroller and the Starbucks cups." Which, don't get me wrong, was fine- just that Storm is always on the lookout for female companionship, and with me looking a little bear-ish and he looking a little femme (he can't help it), well...well, it didn't happen for him that day.

But it turns out we weren't the only ones who thought we looked like a gay couple.

Not a half hour after making that observation, two peckerwoods cruising down the street in a car with crappy music blaring from crappy speeakers shouted something to us at the top of their lungs. I think I know what they said, but you know what, I won't even repeat it. It certainly wasn't welcoming, and absolutely wasn't an invitation to discuss evolving paradigms of modern life and marriage.

So we're in the middle of Idyllic Suburb USA, broad daylight, middle of the day- and get hassled for being gay.

Now, here are a couple of things that those two punks completely missed, in the same order that they occurred to me at that moment:

-My baby son was in his stroller, at arm's reach. When I heard the shouting and the language, surprising me and coming from behind- which could only be construed as threatening- I kicked into ultra defense mode. It was like, threat-baby-defend-adrenaline spike-defend-destroy. It's the kind of feeling that causes people to go from calm to rage in a straight-for-the-windpipe sort of way, which I did not fully appreciate until I was a parent, and for which I would have been in a heap of trouble had those two clowns been close enough to throttle. Dunno if that's a new daddy thing I'll grow out of, or what, but there it is and I don't have alot of control over adrenaline.

-On Fridays it seems I'm walking alone, but usually I'm not. Sure at the time Storm was with me, and of course the baby's always there. But I keep a close friend nearby; ideally you won't see him.

-My close friend has 8 little buddies he never leaves the house without.

-If you just shout stuff at people out of your moving car, you're not cool or even funny. You're just a douche.

-Oh, and I'M NOT GAY.

Fucking imbeciles.

Schizophrenic helicopter pilot Murdoc and I share alot of things: our love for fresh-cut tulips; a respect for raw, naked force; appreciation for the smell of diesel fuel; and the friendly staff of a certain Bangkok "spa". All good stuff, and well worth sharing.

One bad thing we share though is the ignorance of journalists regarding military matters. And like Murdoc, it's usually enough to set my teeth on edge and maybe bitch for a minute, but that's about it. It doesn't help when reporters are actually in the field with operational units and they still get it wrong, mixing up unit designations or vehicle models, but it rarely detracts from the overall point.

That's where the Zarqawi tape comes in, and Jamie McIntyre's effort to make excuses for the guy's poor weapons handling.

Murdoc, Confederate Yankee, and Counter Column all take McIntyre to task for appearing not only an apologist, but stupid too. Their tripartite Fisking covers all the pioints well, and any leftovers are sopped up by their commenters.

I will only add this bit of advice for Mr. McIntyre: the military has an idea of what a "heavy" weapon is. It's probably different from your idea; best not to assume it's the same. Given the man already knew it was a SAW he was looking at, there's just no reason for him to be so wrong about it, let alone cut Iraqi terrorist #1 some slack over it.

A final exercise for other Google-impaired journalists:

You may be afraid of it, but Google is your friend. Try it. Do a search for "heavy machine gun". Go ahead. And what's the first hit?

Browning M2. If you read the accompanying article, you'll find that the thing weighs about 80 lbs, sans tripod. Yeah, that's heavy. It also fires a big round, .50, which is also heavy. Altogether, it's NOT a SAW.

Now try "medium machine gun". What do you get? Why, M240. It weighs in at around 24-odd lbs, depending on trim package and options. Not so very heavy, but it throws a beefy round. It's also not a SAW. Although it IS manufactured by fat bastard Belgians, as is the SAW, it is NOT, again, a SAW.

Just for the fun of it, let's try "light machine gun". Guess what you get about five hits down? Why it's an M249 SAW. Gosh all, and a "light" machine gun...how about that? It only weighs about 25lbs, even with 200 rounds hanging underneath it. Oh, and it fires a varmint cartridge, little different from what you plink moles out of your garden with. See, light.

That takes about 30 seconds. No deadline is that tight.

Biologically, zebras are pink animals with black and white stripes.

Over at Space.com, I read that Burt Rutan has said of the proposed NASA CEV, that it is more like archaeology than rocket science. All too true, and I nearly aspirated my diet coke.

Other choice quotes:

“They are forcing the program to be done with technology that we already know works. They are not creating an environment where it is possible to have a breakthrough,” Rutan advised. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said, contending that programs must encourage risks “in order to stumble into breakthroughs.”

...Rutan said if he was the NASA Administrator, he would call a major press conference about the agency plans to go back to the Moon. “I’d go in front of the microphone,” Rutan said, “and I’d scream at the top of my lungs, ‘this is stupid,’ then turn around and head back to the office and go back to work. If we copy what we had it won’t be affordable enough or safe enough,” Rutan said, to foster human space travel beyond low Earth orbit, to the Moon, and outward.

NASA’s space shuttle is complex and generically dangerous, Rutan pointed out. Still, not flying the shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope is symbolic of a larger issue. “The budget forecast [for NASA] is to go out and spend hundreds of billions of dollar to go to Mars and yet you don’t have the courage to go back to the Hubble … it looks like you got the wrong guys doing it,” Rutan concluded.

If there is a benevolent and loving God watching over us, the government will not get in his way, and we will have real space travel in our lifetime. You figure the odds, 'cause Rutan just pissed off a lot of people. All the more so because he is exactly right.

As your ever helpful Minister Buckethead strove mightily to catch up on his blog reading, a couple items caught his eye. The Maximum Leader is a funny guy; very nice, and has excellent table manners. He has also recently examined the whole illegal wetback immigration thingy. We have discussed this matter here, and come generally to the conclusion that:

1. Illegal Immigration is, uh, illegal,
2. Wanting the border staffed with more than the national security version of the WallMart greeter is a good idea, and likely not racist,
3. Use of the phrase "undocumented-Americans" is probably the worst instance of euphemistic hyphenating in recent memory, and
4. Undocumented-American protestors marching through the streets with Mexican flags demanding the rights of American citizens is not only counterproductive, but kinda offensive even to the laid back and mild mannered Ministry.

But the dear leader has a couple fresh and pungeant ingredients to add to the festering pot of goo that is our national debate on immigration policy:

First, some resources on Mexico's own immigration policy; and second a thoughtful and not at all snarky reimagining of the day without a Mexican of recent memory.

[wik] My own thought, the day after, was that since that day went so well, we should try a day without a Mexican week. Then a month. Pretty soon, with the help of some nicotine gum and some well chewed pencil erasers, we could kick that habit cold.

ABC News has excerpts from a - no shit - Zarqawi Blooper Reel up on their website. It's evidently outtakes from one of his anti-American screeds, featuring hi-larious incidents like: Zarqawi trying to shoot a Kalashnikov, failing, and being shown how by an associate; that same associate grabbing the gun back and being burned on the barrel; and a pair of amusing bright blue tennis shoes that just totally don't make it with the post-Viet Cong black pajamas ensemble our boy Z is rocking.

Remember, people, this is the face of our enemy. Anyone got a cream pie?

(h/t QandO)

While reading something else entirely, I learned a very welcome fact. If the second Death Star was actually as close to Endor as it was depicted in Return of the Jedi, that is, a miles-wide sphere of metal, advanced polymers, and vast nuclear and future-tech reactors orbiting a mere 500 miles above the surface of the moon, then the debris and radiation fallout from its destruction almost certainly sterilized the planet and killed all the Ewoks still living there shortly after the Rebel forces departed. In an ideal world, Jar Jar Binks and his family would have crash landed on the far side not long before this incident.

One per every three deaths of household fish is caused by over-feeding. The other two are suicide.

Loyal reader #0017 Ken, the infamous Oldsmoblogger, has come up with an idea that may actually force the Ministry to lift its gaze from its jewel-like navel, and actually embrace the world outside. Minister Johno recently commented on the formation of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. This tongue in cheek effort generated a twitch of the lips and a muted snigger from the Ministry, but did not capture our soul, put a song in our hearts and leave us yearning to sign up for the duration.

Ken, genius Ohioan (like all Ohioans save Governor Taft) took the idea of the keybees and shook off the dross. He took the nugget that remained, polished it on his shirtsleeve, and gave it a new paintjob. The result, we must admit, is awe-inspiring:

The Regiment Hewlett und Packard, of the Kaiserliche und Koenigliche Reichsarmeevirtual.

Ken has said that we can't purchase our commissions in the regiment like in the good old days. Which, given the nature of the project, seems rather odd. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy would like to be the first to volunteer. Long live the Empire and the Dual Monarchy! Death to the filthy Ottomans! Consternation to ethnic nationalists and there anarchist fellow-travelers! A finger in the eye to all who would frustrate our plans to conquer the world through our cunning scheme of well chosen marriages and ineffectual military operations!

We can dedicate the Ministry Catastratorium and Bunkhouse to the effort. It will be the nerve center and kaffeeklatsch for the revolution. And, of course, a place of retreat when our armies are inevitably defeated.

No, it falleth as a gentle rain from twelve honest men and women. Or something like that. I haven't read The Merchant of Venice in, well, ever.

I'm sure that everyone has heard by now that Zacarias Moussaoui will not be put to death by the state for his alleged role in 9/11/2001. Now, you didn't ask for my opinion, you don't care about my opinion, but you've read this far so why not further? I think this was a good decision. To begin with, I'm not a big fan of the death penalty in most circumstances. It often reeks too much of vengeance, and justice and vengeance are mutually exclusive concepts. But moreover, Moussaoui asked for the chair, arguing that he wants to be a martyr, and also arguing, in essence, "f*ck you, America." (Is that an argument?) So what better than to extend him mercy?

I'm not much of a Christian, but I still organize my life around the ethical priniciples of Jesus, y'know, the red words in the old familiy bible. They're the best thing going, bar none. And mercy is one of the fundamental precepts of that ethical system. (Leaving aside the moral dimension, of course. I'm not qualified to talk about that.) Turn the other cheek. Exercise forbearance. Restrain from vengeance, no matter how incredibly good it might feel, because down that road is barbarity, chaos, and anarchy. Mercy is one of the precepts that has smoothed Western civilization's road to greatness over the years (though it sure can be discarded at the drop of a hat, I tell you what, whenever it's time to kill a few of the guys in the neighboring city).

But a funny thing about Christian mercy is that it can also amount to a big old "f*ck you." Killing Zacarias Moussaoui wouldn't make much difference in the larger scheme of things; some people would feel vindicated, others downright happy. And though it's probable that were he put to death, the glorious shining martyrdom he seeks would actually work out, and we'd have to see his ugly mug again and again and again on posters, banners, and painted bedsheets every time Hizbollah staged a damn rally, it's far more likely that the Legend of Zac would die with him.

But in not putting him to death, in choosing not to martyr him, we have taken the opportunity to reaffirm the core values of our society, to exercise patience and forbearance against crimes which are done and cannot be undone, to avail ourselves of the better angels of our nature, to reaffirm the fundamental difference between us and him, and best of all, to say to Zacarias Moussaoui, "Fuck you. We grant you our mercy."

Later this year, I will be travelling on official Ministry business to Prague, jewel of Bohemia and former site of one of the Ministry's finest and most active field offices. Unfortunately, that office was closed rather bloodily by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, not long before his untimely but incredibly welcome assassination, and its wealth of occult and scientific knowledge was lost. Alas, the Iron Curtain fell before we could get another office satisfactorily established, and so our presence in Czechoslovakia and now the Czech Republic has been for six decades informal, ad hoc, and highly erratic.

(One rather tragic outcome of der Wixer's sacking of our office was that the Ministry lost track of the Golem of Prague. Although we of course had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of the Golem, nor with contributing to nor puncturing the enormous corpus of legends, wives's tales, bedtime stories, parables, and plain out tall-tales that have accreted over the centuries since Rabbi Judah Loew first created his monster, through a remarkable twist of fate we were among several parties entrusted in the mid-eighteenth century with the knowledge of the Golem's long-term resting place within the Old-New Synagogue. But the ravages of the Great War and then the coming of Heydrich led to the loss of that knowledge and many, many more secrets of great and terrible importance.)

Although we at the Ministry have long since given up our ongoing search for clues as to the current resting place of the Guardian of Prague, feeling it is a secret much better left to others, there is much business for us in Bohemia, matters that have gone unseen-to in the more than sixty years since Hitler's filthy butcher came to town. The city has awakened by degrees from the stultifying effects of decades of totalitarian rule, and is once again the scrappy, proud, and vibrant seat of independent Czech identity. Its hard times are not entirely behind it, but good times are ahead.

This brings me to my point. If any of the Ministry's readers have been to Prague in the recent past, do kindly let me know if there's anything I should, uh, know, before I go. There's nothing like greasy food, dumplings, smog, puppet shows, smoky bars, spectacular lager, and long, long walks to set my soul to rights, but since my talent for Slavic languages is limited and my knowledge of the terrain very small, any experiences you might care to relate would be greatly appreciated.

End transmission.

Summer's coming, and with it, a desire for lighter and fizzier beers that both taste great and are less... filling. I haven't made a light beer since the fall, having stashed away enough stout (sort of stout, anyway...), porter, and Belgian strong ale to last me through the cold months. But with the warmer weather it's time now for lawnmowers, short pants, and deck chairs, and with them, brews like...

Atlantic Pale Ale

Ingredients:
5 lbs Munton & Fison Pale Dry Malt Extract
1/2 lb Crystal malt, 40L
4 oz Crystal malt, 20L
2 oz Crystal malt, 60L
1 1/4 oz Northern Brewer hops, 7.6% AAU
1 oz Cascade hops, 6% AAU
1 oz East Kent Goldings hops, 6% AAU
White Labs #0001, California Ale Yeast (liquid)

Steeped crystal malts in muslin bag in 1 gallon water at 155-170 degrees for 45 minutes as I brought 2.3 gallons water to a boil in my main brew kettle. Added steeping water to brew kettle and swirled muslin bag in water to get all the delicious, delicious malt flavor out.

Brought wort to a boil; added 1 1/4 ounces Northern Brewer hops and started the brew clock. At 40 minutes, added 1/4 ounce each Cascade and EKG hops for flavor. At 55 minutes, added 3/4 oz each Cascade and EKG hops for plenty of aroma.

Cooled brew kettle in bathtub with cold water and 25 lbs ice and a few freezer packs just for the heck of it. We got down from 212 to 110 degrees in about half an hour. Added wort to fermenting bucket and added 2 1/2 gallons chilled boiled water to make up about 5.2 gallons total. Pitched yeast at 76 degrees and stashed in the closet where the hot water pipes run. Let's see how this goes...

OG: 1.049

I'm going for a pretty standard American Pale Ale, on the golden side of the color spectrum and with a good balance of light malt sweetness and a forward but not overpowering bitterness. Cascade hops have that characteristic citrusy/floral scent that we all know and love from Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and East Kent Goldings have a grapefruity, fruity, spicy flavor that melds well with them. One's the defining hop of American brewing, one's the defining hop of some of the greatest beers the Empire ever produced, so, Atlantic Pale Ale.

[wik] Fermentation began in about 12 hours and the 24 hour mark is going nuts. Nuts!! Moved it out of the closet to a cooler area once fermentation began - I don't want to make the yeast overexcited so that they produce funny tastes. It's fermenting at about 74 degrees, which is a little (lot) high. Ehh. It'll be fine.

[alsø wik] At bottling it was... fine. In fact better than fine. Totally delicious. Fantastic. Unbelievable. Ambrosial. So that's nice. Um... ahem. Primed with 4 oz corn sugar at bottling. Made a short recipe - only about 4.75 gallons at the most for some reason. Hm. Better make more!!